Until a couple of months ago, Takashi Yamada had one of the most
genteel jobs in Japan. Now, his days are so harried he doesn’t have time
to eat lunch.

Yamada, 45, is a government-bond trader at major brokerage Daiwa Securities Co.

Shock-and-awe monetary policies, announced in April, have sent
Japanese government bonds, the nation’s equivalent of U.S. Treasury
notes, into a whirl of volatility.

“Our job is about interest rates, and that’s supposed to be like rice
in a meal, not steak, something basic but needed,” Yamada said, looking
weary and a bit out of breath, after nonstop juggling of bond selling
and buying on several monitors at his desk. “No one expected this.”

The sudden frenzy of his job underlines the growing fears about
Japan’s surging public debt. Bonds were long stable, which meant the
adjustments to bond trades or “positions” Yamada had to do were routine
and predictable. Not anymore.

The yield, or interest rate, on benchmark 10-year bonds shot up to 1
percent for the first time in a year late last month, although it later
headed back down. In the bond market, yields go up when prices drop, so
even tiny moves in those rates can translate into lots of yen made or
lost.

The lavish revival policies of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, including
the Bank of Japan’s doubling the money supply in two years, are designed
to wrest the nation out of deflation and two decades of economic
doldrums.

But at the heart of “Abenomics” is a contradiction: Japan may not be
able to afford the inflation that Abe’s grand ambition hopes to ignite.

After years of deficits financed by sales of government bonds, public
debt is already twice the size of the economy and interest payments
consume a quarter of government spending. It is an unassailable reality
that if inflation goes up, so must interest rates and so, therefore,
must pressure on the bloated finances of a government atop the world’s
third-largest economy.

Although Abenomics has generally lifted Tokyo stocks and lowered the
yen, a boon for the giant exporters of Japan Inc., the bond market that
keeps Japan’s government afloat is growing ever nervous.